A housing estate in Tipperary, two winters previously.

He could hear the slow creaking and the catches of breath. He knew his mother had been fucking the nordy for the last week at least. He plugged his headphones into the stereo and turned the volume loud. The more they tried to muffle the noise, the more the images of their fucking projected. He sat on the bed, cross-legged, stretching the cord of the headphones to its full extent. The nordy had been kept in the house since just after New Year.

Steven had the lights off. He twitched the curtains to look outside. A hard clear night with stars hung low on the estate. The estate was close in all around.

Now and then, a man would come and stay a while. The men were nordys often. His mother was from the north herself – she had moved down when it went bad. She had Steven a year after the move. She had him for an English fitter she met at a disco in Limerick. The fitter had stayed around for a few years only and he was just quick strokes of memory for Steven – the bristles of a beard, the softness of a wool shirt, the smell of his fags; the smell of the fags in the wool of the shirt. The men who came now were preceded always by a visit from Manus.

Steven was not allowed to speak with Manus – that was his mother’s ruling.

The nordy slept in the boxroom. He watched the portable television in the small sitting room with the curtains drawn. He had his meals in the kitchen. He took some air in the yard out back if the days were dry and warm enough. Steven was not to speak with the nordy either but his mother was at work in the daytime and he did so. The nordy was quiet and made no fuss of anything. They would watch Countdown together. Steven went to the library for him. The nordy had requests – anything Elmore Leonard, anything John D. MacDonald.

One day Manus had called in daytime to see the nordy. Steven led him quietly through the house.

‘That’s some pair of boots,’ Manus said. ‘Size you take?’

‘Twelves.’

‘Fuck me. And what age are you now?’

Steven took off the headphones and looked outside to the estate; the slow nights of a winter. Their noise had ended and he pictured them resting. If he stayed awake long enough he knew he would hear the fucking start up again.

Tottenham Court Road, Sunday morning, 11 a.m.

The greatest insult was to call it the mainland campaign. If they were the mainland, we were what? He carried the guitar case as he walked. It was light as air.

‘Slap it off a wall,’ Manus had said, ‘and it’ll make no differ. She’ll go when she’s to go, hey?’

One o’clock was the time that was set. The morning was hot and dusty. He had slept soundly. There was the feeling of Sunday as he walked north for Camden. As he moved he felt the strength of his intention harden. Trash from the Saturday night went by in drifts of strange breeze about his feet.